In Growing Up Girl: Book One, a young Bernadette Aller floats through her life – job to job, lover to lover, place to place. She is an untethered spirit trying to find her way in a world that’s not been too kind.

Now, as she barrels toward her seventies, she wants to tell her story, not because it’s hers alone, but because it’s a surprisingly common story. It’s a story much of which happens behind doors that display the word unspeakable. Bernadette hires Scully Trippe to ghost write, translating Bernadette’s personal experience into the third person, in what might (or might not) be a misguided attempt to extend the story’s reach.

The time frame is malleable, with the storytelling moving back and forth through several stages of Bernadette’s life.

In this first book of the Growing Up Girl trilogy, BernadetteWorld is populated with Patience, her housekeeper; Maddie, a former lover and now a ghost; and Lucinda, a time traveler who drops in and out.

It’s a quirky group.

Cover artist is Matt Smith. The image of the five-year-old on the cover is Matt’s mother whom he never met. In his own words, “Although I have no memory of her, I treasure the stories of Lynn’s strength, stubbornness, and ferocious loyalty. My hope is to bring her from the muted mysterious shadows into the light with love.”